Following ban in India, Free Basics from Facebook suspended in Egypt Comments

Anonymous, 02 Jan 2016You really have no idea how this works, so let me school you. Facebook convinced a bunch of th... moreBS, noone forces anyone to do everything, except for the 3rd world dictatorships who want their flock subeducated, their society underdeveloped and the flux of information under their complete control.
When you use android or ios, google and apple dont have access to your sensitive information? And many times you are forced to submit much more than you would on fb.

If an Indian boy and an Indian girl want to communicate and exchange private messages about everything, will fb censor them? Is it better for them not to have any kind of communucation at all, is it better for the young ppl not to have access to any kind of information at all, because there is a danger to select trash material??
in fb and in any other social media/news feed tool, the user controls exactly what he reveals about himself and what not, he can filter exactly what kind of news feed he wants to see and what not,
each person is responsible for his actions and his choices. By forbiding any kind of access to the ones who cannot permit none other, but that free option, you condemn them in advance.
You condemn even those who wouldnt abuse it, you condemn the poor not to a have a freecway to communicate with each other, you condemn not have any access to information and stay limited to the restricted access his country allows him to have.
Internet can be a window to the world, anyone can use it to learn and see the world's wonders, or kardasian's curves, or how to cook bombs, its up to them what they will do with that access and free fb can be the mean to grant such acceess to ppl who couldnt have it otherwise.

As for the local gsm companies, dont worry about them, if fb has found a way to convince them, it will surely wont harm them financially...

Mus, 31 Dec 2015I think u need to read the article and the source, it says explicitly that a needed government... moreThe number of users doesn't tell much about connection quality or speed -- it just tells how accessible that good/commodity is. The Toyota Camry has the most "users" but its far from being the best car in the world.

It doesn't look too bad or unusable, but it's quite far from being good in this day and age. Plus, from the little I know about the country, I am skeptical of the connection you can get outside of the delta, the margins of the Nile or the major hotspots that attract lots of tourists. Let's say, I'm pretty sure rural areas and desert (which you have *A LOT* of) aren't quite as well served as the delta -- which is something that happens everywhere, even the top countries of that list.

Aspros, 01 Jan 2016Although I hate to admit it fb already is a global phenomenon, all around the world a great ... moreYou really have no idea how this works, so let me school you. Facebook convinced a bunch of third world telecom companies to give free access to Facebook and their partner sites for nothing. Because bandwidth is not free, that means paying customers are actually subsidizing free Facebook access and getting nothing in return. This is disguised as altruism; Facebook can say they are delivering "free internet," except that "internet" is really a walled-garden to Facebook's platform of censorship. Facebook has a notorious history of deleting opinions and accounts of those who do not fall in line with Mr. Zuckerburg's political views. This is a dangerous precedent as it presents a truly censored network to many first-time Internet users.

Additionally, there is the angle that Facebook is gathering data for all of their "free basics" customers, and passing this information to the US Government. They have already been named as complicit with NSA programs, so now the US Government gets to broaden their collections for free.

If you really don't see the problem with "Free Basics" and why people and governments oppose it, I don't know what to tell you. You are part of the problem. The only reason that "Free Basics" gets a pass in the media is because most people are addicted to Facebook and do not want to admit to the dangers of walled-garden internet. There is more to the internet than Facebook.

I didn't know Facebook is as 'big' and 'global' as this. Must be a universal social network for human by now. For me FB is just a mashup of twitter, whatsapp, instagram and youtube. It basically can do everything in one app. Except that I prefer things separately.

Although I hate to admit it fb already is a global phenomenon, all around the world a great part of the Internet mobile traffic is about fb anyway. How everybody uses this social tool is irrelevant, the important thing is what it can do. And that's bringing ppl together, which is a basic human need... The Indian gmrnt is afraid of another thing, their ppl access to information, the news feed section of the fb can host news from every major global news site, the cultural blow will awaken the average Indian and we realise the tragic conditions he is living. that's not what gmrnts in 3Rd world countries want, they want to keep their flock in their leash...

Once upon a time there was a site called orkut.com. People loved it and were addicted to it and spent huge amounts of time on it. Today orkut has been shut down because no one uses it anymore.
Something better came along, Facebook.com, and just like orkut, people fell in love with it and were addicted to it. Facebook also shares the same fate and something else will come along which will be better than facebook and people will start using it more. Infact something like it did come along ...enter Whatsapp. People loved it, infact many even forgot about facebook. What did facebook do? It bought Whatsapp for $22 billion.
Now facebook knows very well that it cannot keep spending $22 billion every time a startup comes up with a product, better than facebook. So it has now come up with a new strategy "Free basics" or "Internet.org". Free basics is the first step towards throttling your internet i.e. screwing with net neutrality. They say, ok what is wrong with we paying for your internet so that you can access a few sites, we select, for free. After some time they will say, ok now that you have said yes to Free basics why dont we throttle your internet. We will provide a few sites at a faster speed. We pay for your speed too. So today every site loads fast if you have a decent internet connection. Later on, only a few sites that can pay the internet service provider(ISP) high rates will load fast. So tomorrow if a startup comes up with a new product, better than facebook, and if it gains popularity, facebook will just ask ISPs to ensure that those sites take as long as possible to load on your browser. So we all will be stuck with facebook and it will have no competition.
Same goes with Flipkart too. Even they were very happily supporting Airtel zero.
Flipkart knows very well that tomorrow there could be another start up website that will offer bigger discounts and everyone will start using that site.
Flipkart ofcourse backed off after they faced a huge public backlash. But facebook is still aggressively pursuing its Free basics strategy. Infact they even spent more than Rs 100 crore on ad campaigns promoting Free basics. Ofcourse Rs 100 crore is far less than spending $22 billion on buying another startup. What companies like Flipkart and Facebook forget is, once upon a time even they were startups and they would'nt have existed today if it wasn't for net neutrality.
Free basics is not free internet as facebook wants you to believe. Facebook pays for it on your behalf. Why would they do that?
If you feel the same way, you may share it..
Thanks to Sandeep Kurien for coming up with this.
I would recommend all my friends out there who supported FREE Basics without understand the truth please send a follow up mail to TRAI saying that you would like to withdraw your support for FREE Basics

Mus, 31 Dec 2015I think u need to read the article and the source, it says explicitly that a needed government... moreMore users doesn't mean they have good connection LoL
They have to use it but it's still one of the worst (Monopoly if u know what i mean lol)
Note: learn to talk with others LoL

.., 31 Dec 2015Hey I'm in the Philippines and as long as we're registered to a call/text plan w/c is only Php... moreBelize here:

I would love to have free FB access like U said...

this side of the planet we pay 5$ belize currency = to 2.50$ USD for 200 Mb which last for 24 hrs... that is if you only to access a third party app... well if you tried to stream a video on you tube or something, mein...

Subzz, 31 Dec 2015Free? Hah! Good joke Facebook. Free for how long? How many years? You disabled comments, disli... moreHey I'm in the Philippines and as long as we're registered to a call/text plan w/c is only Php10.00 (and this depends on our service provider) a day which is equivalent to USD 0.22cents, we can free data for facebook eventhough our load/service balance is 0.00 and we are not enrolled in any data plan., It really is free.

Anonymous, 31 Dec 2015Basically Free Internet
In the Movie it was Free Phone Service
Basically he is saying th... moreItsnt free internet when only certain sites are accessible. Thats the problem. If it was free internet then every site should be accessible.

Anonymous, 31 Dec 2015Lmao This Guy Made my day funniest Post so far F.Y.I. I watched Kingsmen too I see what your s... moreI also watched the movie but I don't understand how it's related to the post. Can you please explain? hehe ;) thanx